The Bad Guys
by She who is made of stars
Summary: Antonin always knew this was the bad side. A oneshot about Antonin Dolohov. Rated T for implied violence, but it's surprisingly clean.


**This is a oneshot about Antonin Dolohov, written for the Collect them All-Challenge on HPFC. Prompts: Antonin Dolohov, tragedy, word count 950-1000. I hope you enjoy reading :)**

**Also, thanks to Wisebeyondyears for pointing out a mistake I made!**

* * *

This was not the good side.

Antonin had known from the start – when people still called their master by his given name and it was just the six of them and Dumbledore was onto them but everyone else waved their hands and looked the other way –that in the end, they would be the Bad Guys. They would be made of ashes and blood, and they would have a soundtrack of screams and laughs and whispers in the dark, and their hands would be ruby-red with blood and the curses would fill their eyes with emeralds, and they would be Evil.

He'd liked that. This wasn't a fairy tale anyway, so who said the good guys had to win, who said he could not be evil just because?

* * *

When Voldemort preached about pure blood pure magic pure might, Antonin remembered the half-blood Riddle boy from the Muggle orphanage and wondered if anyone else did, too. He supposed it didn't matter much, really; the whole idea was silly anyway. Blessed blood.

What nonsense.

Blood was red and warm and tasted like rusty metal, and it hid inside veins but came pouring out once you broke the skin with curses and steel, whether your great-grandparents carried wands or not. Antonin had seen many Muggles bleed, and their blood looked just like his.

Of course, they killed them anyway.

* * *

Question: who wanted to stop them?  
Answer: everyone.  
Question: who could?  
Answer: no one.

* * *

Their little group soon turned into something bigger. The Carrow twins, whose company Antonin quite enjoyed, took the Mark, followed by Crabbe and Goyle, who he could not stand. Others followed. Antonin lost count quite quickly, uncaring, indifferent. He did what his master wanted him to do, because it happened to be just what he wanted to do himself, even if their motives weren't quite the same. (Curiosity versus megalomania.) His fellow Death Eaters usually failed to capture his attention.

He was mesmerised, however, by the Black children. Bellatrix, young and spoiled and pretty, fought with lethal force and had a passion rivalled by none. Her sister was different; quieter, more reserved, yet radiating authority no matter what she was doing. Antonin quite liked them. Their cousin, though… that was a different matter entirely. Regulus, with his soft voice and dark eyes, unnerved him. When he eventually deserted, Antonin and Bellatrix hunted him down together.

They never did find him, but they had a surprisingly good time.

* * *

Question: when do you back out?  
Answer: you don't.

* * *

In Azkaban, Antonin learned to be afraid. The Dementors showed him his mother dangling from the ceiling with a rope around her neck, and the tiny graves of his sisters, and his father coming into his room late at night –_ it'll be our little secret_ – and after Dorian Lestrange stabbed himself to death with the sharpened end of a spoon in the cell opposite his own, they showed him that, too.

Fifteen years and three days after his capture, their master came for them and Antonin watched Azkaban's walls crumble with a smile on his face.

* * *

Question: how do you know what war to fight?

Answer: all wars are the same war.

* * *

The world hadn't waited for Antonin. There'd been a Triwizard Tournament and Narcissa had had a child (Antonin personally thought the _last_ thing the world needed was another Malfoy, but he kept this to himself) and the Snape boy now taught Potions in the school with a dead Basilisk hidden miles beneath its floors.

The Death Eaters were different, too. All they did was sneak around, casting Imperius curses on the right people and making others disappear from the face of the earth without causing suspicion. People didn't cower in fear behind carefully warded walls anymore. It was no fun like this.

They also seemed to be losing.

Their men were dying one by one (and no matter how much their master liked the Killing Curse, it was hard to win a war when one's soldiers were dead) and the Order seemed to have won every major battle so far.

Antonin decided he did not like this new world nearly as much as he had liked the old one.

* * *

Question: when does the game end?  
Answer: when it stops being fun, of course.

* * *

They ended up winning the war anyways – sort of – but still. It's not like Antonin wanted.  
He's bored. This was supposed to be the Bad Side, with a soundtrack made of screams and laughter and whispers in the dark, but now all he heard was the sound of quills scratching and his master hissing to Nagini. He'd wanted to know things (how hard a man could scream, how much blood someone could lose before their heart decided it wasn't really worth it anymore, how it felt to feel bones breaking under his fingers) and now he knew them. He was done, really, but he couldn't leave now, couldn't stop.

Then, suddenly, the Potter boy was at Hogwarts, and they were all going there and_ this was the endgame_, this was death or victory, and Antonin felt the adrenaline in his veins but it was not what it used to be and it was_ not enough_.

Lupin wasn't the first to duel him that night, but he was the first not to die immediately. The werewolf dodged and deflected the deadly curses and responded with spells of his own, and in the end it wasn't Antonin so much as Bellatrix' weird niece who ended it.

'Nymphadora!' Antonin called out. 'So nice of you to join us!'

The werewolf froze, turned around, and the emerald lights hit him right in the back of the head. The little widow screamed as she watched her husband fall, and Antonin realized he'd truly stopped caring. This used to be the best part and he'd _stopped caring_.

_There was nothing left here._

When Nymphadora raised her wand, Antonin did not move.

* * *

Question: what does dying feel like?


End file.
